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A new review shows the significance of CAM in cancer care and survival.

A number of people undergoing treatment for cancer turn to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to support their recovery process.

Acupuncture, aromatherapy, herbal medicine and meditation practices are among the therapies that cancer patients find helpful. These can provide stress and pain relief, and can help to control the effects of disease and treatment.

Now, a new review of evidence drawn form a range of studies and clinical trails demonstrates that CAM can play a crucial role in influencing cancer survivorship.

Used in combination with conventional medicine and lifestyle changes, CAM can have “a major effect on survival”.

A patient who was diagnosed with bowel cancer that then spread to his liver has been cured thanks to a pioneering new treatment. Brian Brooks, 72, had been told he was unlikely to live more than a year, but a new therapy that involves delivering doses of radiation directly to tumours deep inside the body and using tiny radioactive glass beads has proved to be an effective method.

Advanced bowel cancer can often spread to the liver, so Mr Brooks was put on the Firefox trial, which tests a new method called radioembolisation. The size of a tumour and its location within the body can often make removal using conventional radiotherapy quite difficult.

The new technique can overcome this problem by delivering high-doses of radiation directly into liver tumours for short amounts of time, using radioactive ‘microspheres’ that are injected into their blood supply. These microspheres become trapped in the tumour, which kill the cancer cells with little damage to healthy...